The Ghosts of ’68 Haunt the Election of 2016

[marmar]

The Ghosts of ’68 Haunt the Election of 2016

Posted on May 13, 2016
By Michael Winship / Moyers & Company


Watching the mad, mad, mad, mad world that is the 2016 presidential campaign, I was trying to remember a presidential campaign that was as jaw-dropping, at least in my lifetime, and easily settled on 1968.

For those too young to remember, imagine: As fighting in Vietnam rages on and the Tet Offensive makes us all too aware of the futility of our Southeast Asian military fiasco, Minnesota Sen. Eugene McCarthy decides to run as an antiwar candidate against incumbent President Lyndon Johnson. Supported by an army of “Clean for Gene” college students knocking on doors and making phone calls, McCarthy does surprisingly well, and then New York Sen. Robert Kennedy gets into the race, too. Johnson makes a surprise announcement that he will not seek a second term in the White House and McCarthy and Kennedy duke it out in the primaries.

In the midst of all this, civil rights giant Martin Luther King Jr., is assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee, and riots erupt across the cities of the United States. Two months later, Kennedy is murdered in the kitchen of a Los Angeles hotel just minutes after winning the California primary. In August, eight years after his defeat by John F. Kennedy, the Republicans bring back Richard Nixon as their presidential candidate and the Democrats select Vice President Hubert Humphrey, who has not run in a single primary, as their party’s standard bearer. Simultaneously, a police riot against protesters outside the Democratic convention in Chicago leaves an indelible image of chaos, tear gas and blood. Nixon wins the election with a well-executed campaign set to the accompaniment of dog whistle signals against minorities and left-wing dissenters.

Oh, and one other thing — Alabama Gov. George Wallace, arch segregationist and race baiter, runs as the third-party candidate of the American Independent Party, campaigning as a rebel populist seeking the votes of the angry, white working class. He wins almost 10 million votes and carries five states in the South.

Baker’s book… is eerily reminiscent of what’s going on in 2016 America. ..................(more)

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/the_ghosts_of_68_haunt_the_election_of_2016_20160513

[Silver_Witch]

1. Scary times them and now!

I think the common man is always the loosed! But we are boiling slowly so perhaps we will not notice!

[bemildred]

2. Yep. nt

[malthaussen]

3. I think the ghosts of '72 haunt it more.

Nixon's slaughter of McGovern has made the Democratic Party run scared for over 40 years, now. There is no sign of it letting up, either.

-- Mal

[bemildred]

5. Yeah, I thought that too.

But I think it's both, and '72 was the more important, when Nixon got re-elected. The whole debacle from when Kennedy was assassinated to when Raygun came in, with Tricky Dick's second inaugural as the apex of the movement.

[LiberalArkie]

6. I remember those of us for Kennedy or McCarthy were lambasted by the Democratic party as

too Liberal. "We lost to Nixon because they did not vote for Humphrey". Anyone on the left became a draft dodger, against wars etc. The Democrats (in the South at least) started labeling non conservative Democrats as that and a lot thought that was how the country was moving.

Somehow those of us on the left were at fault for Nixon being elected because we did not support a man who was not even a candidate for President in the Democratic Party. We were at fault for the police riot.

[bemildred]

9. It all seems very familiar.

There are so many differences in the political situatiion and the candidates, but I keep thinking it really feels the same, the divided parties at war with their membership, the jingo blowhards, the feverish attempts to manipulate the electorate and dissemble the issues in favor of hyperbole and cant in order to retain power just a little bit longer. And they disrespect us.

[jwirr]

14. All aimed at moving us further to the central - further toward

a Clinton - Bill in 92 and Hillary in 16. And all by the establishment Democrats. We weren't losing elections because we were too liberal. We were losing elections because the people had no voice in who was to run in most of these races.

[bemildred]

16. I know what you are talking about, but I don't think it's as simple as the Clinton's ambitions.

It is about control of the parties, as you would expect with political insurgencies in a two-party system.

There are lots of people doing that sort of thing. Run-to-lose, intra-party fighting, lying, it's very American, always has been. Republicans have been known to do it too. The Clinton's played the game well. They would not be there at all if they did not.

In '68 the Dems tried to shove Hubert down our throats and lost, then McGovern won the Nom outright as an insurgent, and the leadership made sure he lost too. Would not look right if an insurgent won, would it? And then they are out too.

After the Nixon debacle, Jimmy C. got in as an outsider and they savaged him mercilessly for four years. Remember "BIlly Beer"? Then Raygun got shoehorned in and it was Camelot with a new name all of a sudden.

That was when I started waiting for this current mess, when they doubled down on the bullshit and denial, political reform was not accepted. That's very American too.

Now we have wannabe dynasties.

But we have obtained social reforms in the meantime, as sort of a substitute for reform at the top: for women, for all sorts of minorities and outsiders, and in the long run that will do them in, and their own incompetence.

[jwirr]

18. Agree. I was actually using the Clinton-Clinton to symbolize

the Third Way Party.

[bemildred]

20. Didn't mean to lecture you.

Mr. Englehardt agrees with us:

Hawkish Washington

Recently, in the New York Times Magazine, journalist Mark Landler offered a political portrait entitled “How Hillary Clinton Became a Hawk.” He laid out just how the senator and later secretary of state remade herself as, essentially, a military groupie, fawning over commanders or former commanders ranging from then-General David Petraeus to Fox analyst and retired general Jack Keane; how, that is, she became a figure, even on the present political landscape, notable for her “appetite for military engagement abroad” (and as a consequence, well-defended against Republican charges of “weakness”).

There’s no reason, however, to pin the war-lover or “last true hawk” label on her alone, not in present-day Washington. After all, just about everyone there wants a piece of the action. During their primary season debates, for instance, a number of the Republican candidates spoke repeatedly about building up the US Sixth Fleet in the Mediterranean, while making that already growing force sound like a set of decrepit barges.

http://www.thenation.com/article/the-american-foreign-policy-establishment-is-a-one-trick-pony/

Some posters snarl at you if you ever defend the Clintons, so perhaps I get defensive, I am a Bernie-shill, but I don't really think it's about them. I criticize and defend Obama too. Bernie will have his troubles and mistakes too, if he ever gets the chance. You have to keep your eye on the ball.

[jwirr]

21. +1

[malthaussen]

25. Two words: Credibility Gap

I think it is a coin-toss whether Mrs Clinton's is worse in 2016 than Mr Johnson's was in 1968, both within the Party and within the nation. But her team and supporters apparently don't consider it a problem, since she's still running.

-- Mal

[bemildred]

27. Good point. nt

[Baobab]

4. Economics of Today Completely Different-

For example, computers are making workers unnecessary

Also, BAD US Pushed TRADE DEALS are basically a global coup in disguise-

They are trying to take over the future world for corporations. Blocking public services like health care and education.

Massive looting of Americas remaining assets is occurring and the Democratic part is acting as the enabler of predatory banks and ponzi-like investment schemes trying to blackmail the country into providing bailouts to them encouraging bad business decisions.

ISDS in trade deals - special corporate forever rights to rigid policy, is particularly horrible.

The US is now the army of multinational corporations. More so than other countries. This Democratic Convention needs to focus on those issues and not deny them.

[jtuck004]

10. "...now the army of multinational corporations...This Democratic Convention needs to focus on those"

They have been, looking for donations.

Oh,wait...you meant that another way.

[jalan48]

7. I saw Kennedy speak a few months prior to his being killed.

I think he would have easily beat Nixon-he was attracting large, enthusiastic crowds and was galvanizing young voters to turn out. I guess he had to be taken out in order for the MIC to stay in control of the government.

[Javaman]

13. he would have been president. How different the world would be today.

I still look back at those times as what could have been.

instead we were thrust into the alternative reality of what we have now.

the era of the endless wars.

[zeemike]

19. Of all the words of mice and men

The saddest are, it might have been.

Yep, it could have been a much different world...a much better one.
But that world did not suit the MIC so it could not be allowed to happen.

[Va Lefty]

28. I agree. This Country goes down an entirely different road if RFK is elected.

He would have ended the war in 1969. Roughly 21,000 Americans would not have been killed there.
http://www.archives.gov/research/military/vietnam-war/casualty-statistics.html
There would have been no Watergate. No Carter Presidency, which was a reaction to Watergate. No Reagan Presidency which was a reaction to Carter.
I think that may have been our last, best chance as a Country to lift people out of poverty instead of driving more into it. Help people find jobs instead of helping corporations move them overseas

[condoleeza]

22. I met Kennedy too

just 2 weeks before he died. I was working at the Oregonian and he came in to be interviewed. I was wearing a McCarthy button, he was not happy, but still friendly.

[jalan48]

23. I was living in Seattle about the same time.

He was very charismatic. As bland as Humphrey was he still almost won. 1968 was a very odd and tragic year.

[The Green Manalishi]

8. Don't underestimate fundementals

Nixon ran a brilliant campaign. Say what you will about Pat Buchanan, but he did a masterful job.
Nixon very carefully laid the groundwork in 1966, supporting congressional candidates and building up a big stash of favors owed and goodwill amongst the people he was going to need in two years.

Sometimes the crucial parts of politics are the boring stuff; the four years before the election, the logistics, building up IOUs that can be called in (in Nixon's case in order to shot down Rockerfeller at the convention).

[zentrum]

11. Thanks so much for this.

[kairos12]

12. I remember 68 as way worse.

[Spitfire of ATJ]

15. Both parties are ignoring their base in this election.

[Baobab]

17. The lure of easy money -corporate temporary guest worker programs is strong.

Imagine if your company could get skilled professionals as subcontractors- people with advanced degrees- from developing countries for minimum wage. Would you?

That's what both parties seem to secretly want to figure out a way to do, (20 years of back room negotiations and thousands of documents produced by dozens of working groups planning this out tells us so!) especially if they can maintain plausible deniability by figuring out a way to blame it on somebody else, like for example, the WTO.

In exchange for privatizing and putting up these jobs for bidding on - to be awarded to the lowest qualified international or local bidder, our corporations will get trade concessions, like the right to open factories and branches overseas and be treated even better than if we were a locally owned firm.

That works both ways, they will get that too, its reciprocal.

[N_E_1 for Tennis]

24. 1968 shaped the rest of my life...

I was protesting the war in Detroit, standing under the statue of " The Spirit of Detroit".
It was about 2 in the afternoon when we heard the news of his death.
I still tear up thinking of that day.

[NewImproved Deal]

26. Boss Ed Rendell even looks like Richard Daley...

(Note his "Hillary" button):

[link:|

[bemildred]

29. The convention that could have been: Mourning the Trump/Cruz open convention we’ll never have

If you want to know about conventions? 1968 et. seq. here it is. Walter Karp's "Liberty Under Seige" (available from Harper's) is good on this period too.

---

After Hubert Humphrey won the Democratic nomination without entering a single primary, at a convention that broke out in brawls both inside and outside the convention hall, and then promptly went on to lose the election to Nixon, the Democrats empaneled a commission to reform their nomination process to replace the smoke-filled rooms with, mostly, primary elections.

Republicans, taking stock of the political winds, mostly followed suit. It seemed the smoke-filled rooms—and the dark arts of convention manipulation—were a thing of the past.

One last hurrah

Except for that one last hurrah.

In 1976, conservatives, ever alert for signs of civilizational collapse, somehow managed to frame poor Gerald Ford as a liberal quisling, and lined up behind Ronald Reagan’s nearly unprecedented challenge to a sitting president of his own party, which he fought almost to a tie.

http://www.salon.com/2016/05/14/the_convention_that_could_have_been_mourning_the_trumpcruz_open_convention_well_never_have/